


10-91E Doesn't Quite Cover It

by neierathima



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-27
Updated: 2012-10-27
Packaged: 2017-11-17 03:51:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/547321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neierathima/pseuds/neierathima
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Sheriff Stilinski gets bitten by the Alpha instead of Scott. AU from the pilot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	10-91E Doesn't Quite Cover It

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by havenward, any remaining mistakes are mine. 
> 
> Regarding the title, that's what the internet tells me is the police code for an animal bite. 
> 
> This is my little side project that I'm working on when I need an escape from my main fic project, so while I do intend to write the next section at some point, no idea when that will be. This was originally written in pieces on my tumblr, and future parts will probably be done there as well. If you're interested in watching my random tumblr fic ramblings, I'm also neierathima there as well.

John makes sure Scott and Stiles get back into the jeep and on their way to Melissa’s, ordering Stiles to stay there for the night. He heads back to Deputy Patel, hoping to hear some good news. She doesn’t have any of that, but what she does have is a bunch of deputies and support staff searching the woods and not finding anything. He tells her he’s going to take a minute and wanders back in the direction of where he found the boys.

He keeps walking into the woods, away from where the drag marks suggest the other half of the body would be found. He’s not sure exactly what his hunch is yet, but Stiles came from this direction, and whatever else is true about his son, the kid has an uncanny knack for finding trouble.

He’s wandered to the point where he can’t see or hear any of his people, and he’s about to give it up when he notices two things. The first is the body. Something about the look in the dead woman’s eyes and the way she’s positioned, on top of all the other evidence, convinces John that she wasn’t just killed by a wild animal.

The second is the eyes, glowing red in the dark.

They’re coming at him fast. Very fast. He doesn’t even have time to pull his gun before it’s on him, a sharp shooting pain in his side that has him gasping for breath and losing focus. When he gets his bearings, the wolf is gone. He presses his shirt onto the wound and holds pressure, calling on his radio for Patel.

He makes sure Patel can handle the cleanup of the scene before letting her have one of the deputies drive him to the hospital. Melissa is on duty, which means he at least gets the friendly lecture while she’s patching him. He doesn’t tell her about Scott being out in the woods, because he’s sure it was Stiles fault, and both McCalls deserve a few days off.

When he gets home he falls straight into bed, already dreading tomorrow’s paperwork.

He wakes up to the smell of coffee and bacon, which means that Melissa spilled the beans about John getting injured. Stiles only lets him have bacon when John is in trouble. Managing his dad’s diet seems to make Stiles feel better, and John doesn’t have it in him to take anything away from his kid after everything Stiles has been through.

That doesn’t mean he’s looking forward to the lecture. He puts on clothes and heads down anyway.

Stiles is waiting for him, bobbing his head to whatever music is playing inside his skull, deftly moving around the kitchen. Stiles learned to cook from Caroline, and John always loves being reminded how much like his mother Stiles actually is.

“Do I get some of that bacon or are you just taunting me with it?”

Stiles spins around, wielding the spatula. “Dad! Getting attacked by an animal at a crime scene? I hope you don’t think that’s acceptable.”

“Well it’s not like I did it on purpose. Anyway, I feel fine. The deputies called the state animal control, told them about the wolf. They’ll find it and deal with it.”

Stiles is giving him the look that means he’s about to call bullshit. Caroline always said he got that look from John. He likes that; he just wishes he’d get to see it less.

“Dad, pretty sure there haven’t been any wolves in California in, like, sixty years.”

John gets himself a cup of coffee and leans against the counter. Stiles knows some weird shit, but it’s usually true. And there was something off about the thing that attacked him. He can feel that hunch from last night coming back, starting to put together the pieces in the back of his mind, where he can’t quite see them yet.

“Ok, then what bit me?”

Stiles shrugs, turning off the burners and putting the spatula down. “Don’t know. Let me see it?”

John’s not sure how he feels about this habit of Stiles’ needing to see for himself how his father has been hurt, but Stiles is more freaked out by not knowing than he is by blood. John lifts up his shirt, letting Stiles poke at the bandage. It doesn’t hurt at all. Somehow, between Stiles’ clumsiness and his own, the bandage gets pulled off.

Underneath, the skin is smooth and completely unmarked, no hint that he was ever hurt at all.

“Shit.”

“Stiles, language.”

Well, fuck.

John doesn’t panic, but only because he knows that if he does, Stiles will. As it is, Stiles looks right on the edge of an attack. It helps, because focusing on making sure Stiles is ok means he doesn’t have time to think about his own impending freak out. It’s a trick he has far too much experience with.

“Dad, dad, oh my god dad, what is happening.”

“Stiles, come on, it’s ok.”

“Ok?! Healing overnight is ok? From a freaky not-wolf bite?”

“No wound is better than the other option?” Stiles gives John a look that lets him know just how bad that excuse was. He can’t help but agree. “I’ll get Melissa to look at it later, go get ready for school.”

Stiles goes, eventually, and John sends a small thanks heavenward that Stiles still obeys that much. Just as John is finishing getting ready, Deputy Patel calls to inform him that they’ve identified the body. He tries to wrap his head around the sudden addition of an almost decade old arson case into his very recent murder.

“…Hale? You’re sure?”

“The Hales?”

He groans to himself as he hears Stiles’ exclamation, hoping that for once Stiles will let this go. He lets Patel get off the phone and turns around. Stiles is at least dressed, backpack in hand, but John can practically smell the curiosity seeping out of his pores.

“No. You are not getting involved. In fact, I am driving you to school.”

Stiles doesn’t protest nearly as hard as John expects, which is a little troubling, but right now he has an open murder, a mysterious bite wound that isn’t there anymore, and an animal that isn’t a wolf near a crime that looks like an animal attack but isn’t. Stiles can take care of himself for just a little longer.

He drops Stiles off at school with one more stern admonishment to stay out of trouble, then heads in to the station.

Maybe today won’t be as bad as he’s expecting.

  


*****

Stiles gives his dad full credit for attempting normalcy, but there is no way he is focusing on school with everything that's going on. He's worried that Scott will want to know what's up with him. Thankfully his best friend is besotted with the new girl, which means Stiles can get some work done.

He has all of homeroom to google things, and then in the second half of history they're supposed to be working on a paper in the library, so Stiles can get more research done. There isn't much to go on. Wolf-like creature in the woods. Dead body that looks like an animal attack but was definitely murder. A bite that healed overnight. A family that was burned to the ground almost ten years ago.

It's actually the last part that puts the idea in Stiles' head. The Hales had been in Beacon Hills for a long time, and they had a lot of money, but they didn't act like any of the other well-off families that settled in the overpriced McMansions around town. In fact, despite being well liked, the Hales had always been considered a little weird. Sometimes jokes were made that the Hale house was haunted.

Not a wolf, but like one.

Once it jumps into his head - _lycanthropy_ \- he can't leave it alone. He tells himself there's no such thing, that it's too out there, that his dad is absolutely not a werewolf.

The bell rings for the next period, and Stiles realizes if he leaves now he can catch the bus that runs far enough out of town for Stiles to walk the rest of the way to the remains of the Hale house. 

  


*****

The station is actually less of a mess than John could have hoped for, under the circumstances, but he finds his temper fraying anyway. On top of the new murder, he has to dig out the files on the Hale fire, which annoys him more than pulling cold cases usually does. As much as he disagreed with the former Sheriff about the arson case, it is what it is, and it's hardly the first case he's inherited that he didn't like the way it was handled before it came to him. But this time, as he's going over the file, the memory of nineteen-year-old Laura Hale holding her brother, of the way Sheriff Todd had told him to let it go, makes John want to hit something.

He closes his eyes, takes deep breaths until he calms down, and then picks the file up again.

The rest of the morning goes more or less the same. Something that he can normally handle just fine sets him on edge, he summons up some calm and then gets back to work. When the itch towards violence gets worse, he thinks of Stiles, wonders if his son is handling this ok. The thought helps a little.

Helps in that it's easier to keep from snapping at his deputies or the idiots at the mayor's office when he focuses on Stiles. Doesn't help in that the fact that his son is so far away leaves John with a persistent nagging feeling of wrongness. Stiles should be here, with him, where John can keep him safe.

He's already decided he's going to swing by to pick Stiles up for lunch, just to check on him, when the school calls to tell him that Stiles has skipped after his morning classes. John knows that he should try harder to make sure Stiles goes to school every day; but with everything that happened when Caroline was sick, and then after, he didn't feel much guilt for convincing the teachers to turn a blind eye to Stiles' occasional unplanned days off, so long as it didn't happen too often. He lets the administrative assistant who called him believe that Stiles is just having a bad day and then grabs his jacket after she hangs up.

He has a few guesses as to where Stiles is headed.

  


*****

The trek out to the Hale property line gives Stiles time to reflect that he has no idea what he is looking for, and even less of an idea of what to do if he finds it. His general thought was "something werewolf-y" but he doesn't actually know what that would be. He keeps going, because it's still the best plan he has and because he hopes that if he can find something really useful he can help his dad. His dad, who is absolutely not a werewolf.

About the time he comes into sight of the burned out house, he realizes that if werewolves are real, he might be walking right towards one. He's pacing a few yards away from the front of the house when a hand drops down on his shoulder.

Stiles will tell people later that he responded in a manly fashion, but actually he shouts and jumps away, tripping over his own feet and nearly landing in the dirt. The hand that startled him catches his elbow, keeping him upright.

"What are you doing here? This is private property."

It takes a moment of shaking off the shock and taking a deliberate step back before Stiles actually bothers to look at the guy. When he does, he realizes this guy is both ridiculously good looking and has a serious scowl. "Oh my god, you cannot just sneak up on people like that." The man frowns more, which Stiles would not have bet was possible.

"I didn't sneak up on you, you weren't paying attention," he says, immediately looking upset at having responded to Stiles' tangent. Stiles is used to that look. "You need to leave, right now."

Stiles would actually really, really like to leave, but he came here to help his dad, and he's not going until he's sure there's nothing to find. "Sorry, no can do. I need information, and this place might have some."

"So you're going to break into m- somebody’s house?"

Stiles notices the slip, and he realizes who this guy has to be. "You're Derek Hale! Your sister -" he cuts off, not sure what to say.

The guy - Derek - looks murderous when Stiles mentions his sister, and he steps forward, reaching into Stiles' space, hands open to grab at Stiles' jacket. Derek shakes Stiles, once, before he's ripped away from Stiles and thrown across the clearing.

Stiles looks back from Derek's slide across the ground to see his dad positioning himself in front of Stiles, growling and, holy shit, are those claws?! He's still processing when Derek jumps to his feet, hands thrown out and, oh god, he has claws too. And glowing blue eyes and fangs.

"Don't touch my son."

Derek stops a few feet away, growling. When his dad steps forward and it looks like they really are going to fight, Stiles jumps in. Literally, he puts himself between two angry werewolves. Which is probably not his best idea ever, because his dad immediately shoves Stiles behind him again, and Derek yells at him to get out of the way.

"Hey! Both of you, cut it out! There will be no werewolf fights. Dad, it's ok, Derek just freaked out because I said something really stupid; he wasn't actually going to hurt me. Derek, my dad is the sheriff, he will totally arrest you."

They both turn to look at him, and he chooses to believe it's because of how logical and calm he is, not because they think he's acting like an idiot. Whatever, it works, because all the claws and fangs and glowing eyes have been put away. His dad looks freaked out, and Derek just looks grumpy again.

"Um. So. Werewolves are a thing."

His dad rolls his eyes before turning to Derek, all business. "Derek, huh? Derek Hale? We've been trying to contact you about your sister."

Stiles is uncomfortable at witnessing the look on Derek's face, resignation to being told something that he knew was true already. His dad is awesome, though, letting Derek know gently, being comforting but professional as he explains what he can. It's only when he gets to the end of the night that his tone slips more towards interrogation.

"Mr. Hale, I was …bitten last night. Very near where your sister was found. Do you happen to know anything about that?"

Derek shakes his head, looking maybe worried or maybe pissed, Stiles can't tell. "It wasn't me. There's another werewolf. An alpha. It's the one that gave you the bite."

"And the one that killed your sister."

Derek nods, looking entirely broken, and Stiles is reminded that he has the best dad in the world when the sheriff pulls Derek in for a hug. He watches for a minute until it finally hits him that his dad is a werewolf.

"Oh my god." 

  


*****

The Hale property is not the first place on his list, but John gets around to it fast enough. He parks most of the way up the drive before heading on foot towards the house.

John hears the voices well before he should, and it's one more piece of evidence to add to whatever the hell is going on. He contemplates it for a moment before being distracted because one of those voices is Stiles. As soon as he realizes that, he can hear something else, fainter but still far too loud for a human - for somebody _normal_ \- to hear. A heartbeat, Stiles' heartbeat, and it's beating too fast.

John starts running, breaking through the trees in time to see a man put his hands on Stiles. Everything sharpens, his focus narrowing down to Stiles and the man threatening his son. John has been in dangerous situations before, but he's never felt as absolutely centered on one task as he is on protecting his son. Nothing else matters.

He's across the clearing, ripping the man away from Stiles. He spares a second to make sure that his son is ok for the moment, before turning back to the threat. He can feel his body changing, hands and face and muscles, and there's the distant thought that it isn't normal. But he feels strong; he's going to protect his son. This is _right_.

The man gets up and John recognizes him from the files he's been looking at, but it isn't relevant to keeping him away from Stiles. John warns him away, and Derek Hale growls but stays far enough back that John can resist the urge to claw at him. John steps forward, fighting the urge to force Hale to back down, and then Stiles steps between them. He shoves Stiles back, getting him out of the way, trying to focus on what Stiles is actually saying. Something about not fighting?

He hears Hale tell Stiles to get out of the way, and that tips John's control back to his rational mind. He focuses as much as he can on every bit of training and experience he has as sheriff, feeling the claws disappear. The last thread of overprotective rage fades as Stiles' heartbeat slows.

"So. Werewolves are a thing."

John rolls his eyes, because really, that's the best his kid can come up with? He ignores his son and focuses on Derek. This isn't how he wanted to tell Derek that his sister was dead, but John has done this before. It's so much worse now that he can hear Derek's heart, the too-fast rhythm that doesn't show on his face.

John has never liked interrogating the grieving, but he'll never get better answers than he will right now. When he presses Derek on the bite John received last night, the one that apparently made him a werewolf, Derek looks stricken. He denies it; and though Derek is certainly feeling guilty about something, John believes that Derek wasn't responsible for what happened to him. When he confirms that this Alpha is the one that killed Laura Hale, Derek truly does look broken, and John can't keep up the pretense of an interrogation anymore.

Normally he'd stick with a hand on the shoulder, but that same instinct that had him throwing himself between Stiles and a threat urges him to wrap his arms around Derek. The man goes limp his arms, sobbing quietly enough that John doesn't think Stiles can hear. He doesn't say any of the comforting words that he says to Stiles or Scott, thinking that Derek won't appreciate them, but he holds tight, even when Derek tries to pull back.

When he finally lets Derek go, Stiles is practically bouncing next to them, clearly holding back words. Figuring it's better to let him talk before he explodes, John waves a hand at Stiles.

"Oh. My. God. Dad, you're a werewolf! This is the coolest thing ever. And Derek! You're a werewolf too, of course you are. All the Hales must have been, right? What's an alpha? How come it bit my dad? Oh, you probably know all about being a werewolf. You have to help me with my dad, because he needs to not go all growly on a suspect, that would be bad. Why did you go all growly on Derek anyway?"

Derek has the usual reaction to a full on Stiles interrogation, which is stunned disbelief, though he hides it well under that frown. When Derek looks to him for help, John just claps him on the shoulder and starts walking towards the cruiser. "C'mon kid, you can ask Derek your questions over dinner. We're having burgers."

Stiles follows and a half step behind him so does Derek. "Uh, no way, we talked about your cholesterol. Burgers are on the don't list."

"I'm a werewolf now, I'm pretty sure I'm not going to have a heart attack."

Stiles scoffs, but he turns to Derek for confirmation. "Derek, can werewolves have heart attacks?"

Derek looks like he wants nothing to do with either of them, but he answers. "Never heard of it happening."

John lets himself crow in victory, smiling when Stiles pouts.

"Fine. But we are having salads. Werewolves need vegetables too!"

When Stiles starts to walk ahead, Derek keeping pace with him, John lets himself fall back a little bit, observing. Derek's body is still tense, but he doesn't react poorly when Stiles edges into his space. Which Stiles does, more than usual with strangers.

John is apparently a werewolf, with fangs and claws, his son seems moments away from adopting a stray werewolf (and John is inclined to let him because of instincts he doesn't yet understand), and there's another werewolf somewhere in the woods, killing people. On the other hand, he's got a solid lead on his murder case, and he can finally justify eating as much red meat as he wants.

Things could be worse.


End file.
